


Wild Draw Four

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Appearances by other delinquents, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Minor Gina Martin/Raven Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-08-11
Packaged: 2019-06-26 01:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15652896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: Bellamy is standing by the fire door. He's holding her fairy godmother wand in his right hand. The little string of pompoms she added to the end bounce with brief agitation when he notices her and jerks his hand up. Maybe he is casting a spell on her, she thinks."So," he says. "Last night—?"BFF Fill for the prompt “Bellamy and Clarke sleep together but they don't want to talk about it and they end up acting like a couple without even realizing, but they also deny everything to their friends.”  Requested by blossomlilthing.





	Wild Draw Four

When Clarke runs into Bellamy, brushing his teeth in the fourth-floor bathroom on the morning of Saturday, November first, she doesn’t have the slightest idea what to say. He’s wearing nothing but a towel and a pair of old flip-flops. His hair’s still wet from his shower and drops of water cling to his arms and back. Just beyond him is the only window, which is steamed over so that the outside world, the path out of campus, the tennis courts, the overcast autumn sky with its ocean liners of immobile gray clouds, are all obscured, and she has to slide by him to get to her cubbyhole and grab her own stuff. Her arm brushes against his back, his skin unexpectedly warm and unfairly soft. She doesn’t say anything then, either, even when he looks back at her over his shoulder and raises his eyebrows. It’s hard to tell if he’s grinning with the toothbrush in his mouth. 

She sets herself up at the second sink from the door.  

This wouldn’t be so awkward, wouldn’t be awkward at all, if she hadn’t spent most of last night with her legs around his waist. 

Bellamy rinses off his toothbrush and puts it away. “See you later, Clarke,” he says, as he passes her by, his hand settling just for a moment at her waist before he’s out the door and gone. 

* 

Room 413 is still empty when Clarke returns, her mouth bursting with peppermint, her skin warm and clean and her feet squelching against the plastic soles of her shoes. She's glad for the solitude. Raven's bed is made, just as it was when Clarke came tiptoeing in at five a.m., fully expecting to find her roommate already asleep and hoping that at best she might manage a few hours of deep, dreamless, blissful unconsciousness before the inevitable questioning began. By now it's clear that Raven had her own adventure last night. Her books are still sitting in an unsteady pile on her desk, her gym clothes are draped over her chair, and her astronaut costume is nowhere to be found: everything exactly as she left it when they headed out to the party last night. 

Which means Clarke has a few questions for her, too. Like what it's like to take a space walk across the quad in the bleary, gray daylight hours, beneath a faded and cold autumn sky, long after the Halloween magic has dissipated and before the campus has quite woken to its normal rhythms again. 

Clarke's own costume is a crumpled mess of fabric on top of her dresser, where it's knocked over her deodorant and toppled her hairbrush to the floor. She didn't bother putting it on to walk home. There was no point. Five in the morning is a non-hour: before the early birds have risen, after even the most hopeless night owls have gone to bed, and she was traveling no further than down a hallway, through a fire door, and then across the way to her own familiar room. She'd stood outside it for a moment trying to remember where she put her keys, staring at the scarecrow and pumpkin she'd drawn herself on the dry-erase board beneath the big brass 413, her heavy fairy godmother dress over her arm and her shoes hanging from the fingers of her left hand. Her bare feet were cold against the hallway floor. The window behind her revealed only night sky but she could feel dawn coming. 

Then at last, she found the keys in the pocket of the dress and let herself into the undisturbed dark of her room. She could hear her own breathing and feel every goosebump on her bare arms and legs. 

Tired as she was, she was sure she'd fall asleep as soon as she collapsed against her pillows, but instead she lay awake, beneath the silver glow of the full moon through her window, still wearing one of Bellamy's shirts and her hair still barely holding its now-messy braid, wondering which of her most recent memories was even real, what she'd done and what would happen next. Stayed awake a long time, it felt like, and drifted off without realizing she was drifting. 

Bellamy's shirt she left crumpled at the bottom of her bed before her shower, and she watches it now as she gets dressed, wondering in a light and wordless way what will happen to it now—what she will do next, now. She supposes she should get it back to him. That would be the polite, the normal thing to do. And at the same time maybe she can break out of the shocked confusion that has made every moment feel distant and false, like she’s been living a fake life ever since she slipped softly out the door to his room six short, eternal hours ago. 

This feeling isn't regret, she decides, as she pulls on a t-shirt and bends to pick her hairbrush up off the floor. She's known regret. This is only a fearful uncertainty. She barely knows what she's feeling, let alone what Bellamy might be.  

When she's ready, she shoves her feet in her slippers and grabs up the shirt, folding it nicely as she walks to the door. She opens it, and gets one step out into the hallway, when she hears an echo of footsteps and looks up. 

Bellamy is standing by the fire door. He's holding her fairy godmother wand in his right hand. The little string of pompoms she added to the end bounce with brief agitation when he notices her and jerks his hand up. Maybe he is casting a spell on her, she thinks.  

"So," he says. "Last night—?" 

* 

Last night and the campus Halloween dance. The steps up to the second floor of the campus center were sticky with beer and hazardous with bodies, and the music from the head of the dance floor boomed with thought-crushing bass. At first, they stuck together in a group. But by ten, maybe eleven, Clarke and Bellamy were alone, alone but for the strangers—their classmates and hallmates and people they hardly knew or had seen around, dressed up as strangers—a thief, a Senator, a witch—crushing close. Clarke ended up squashed against a fairy with oversized wings and she remembers Bellamy's hands at her hips, twirling her around and out of the way of the glittery plastic monstrosities that tried to bat her in the face. And then it was easy to stay close. 

"Thanks," she told him, not loud enough. 

He bent down with his hand cupping his ear, the feather on top of his pirate's hat nodding. 

Clarke leaned up on her toes and yelled, "Thanks!" again and he smiled and waved his hand and shrugged. 

"Any time!" 

As if to prove it, he grabbed her around the waist again and spun her in a circle, and when she came at last to rest it was right up against him, crushed against his chest. The crowd and the noise were her excuse to stay. She slung her arms over his shoulders and laughed.  

All of that was easy. Bellamy: her closest friend. Bellamy, who she'd danced with before, let him twirl her around, and twirled him, and giggled through it all, stupid and easy and silly and friendly; she could not blame herself if sometimes they were also gentle and soft. She could not blame herself if she did not want to let go, when she danced close to him, if for a moment his forehead touched hers and her breath caught in her throat. 

* 

"Yeah." 

She closes her door behind her and takes two steps forward, so they're almost meeting in the middle of the hall. What are they supposed to say to each other now? 

_It was fun?_

_No regrets?_

_I need to give you this back?_

"I—here," Bellamy says, and holds out the wand for her to take. "I think you forgot this."

"Thanks," Clarke answers. When she reaches out for it, she makes sure their fingers don't touch, as if—what? She were afraid electricity might spark? Or that something might happen in the safe light of a new day, a new month, and both of them back to their old, familiar selves? She's not a fairy godmother anymore, and he's not a pirate. He's just Bellamy, staring at her with his lips parted and an uncertain softness around his eyes. 

"Um, here," she adds, and hands him his shirt. "You probably want this back." 

Having said nothing, still they find themselves with nothing more to say, no excuse for their silences or the half-formed distance still between them. If she could, she'd break it, launch herself at him again. But last night— 

She'd be kidding herself if she said last night was easy. Once they got back to the dorm it was, yes. But for a moment at the edge of the dance floor, wanting to leave, the people too sweaty and the music too loud and the crunch of spilled food too disgusting beneath her feet, but not wanting to leave _him_ , she'd known herself on the edge of two divergent paths and felt frozen, just as she's frozen now. It was Bellamy who turned without warning and took her hands. That was how she understood he felt the moment, too. She saw everything between them with a startling clarity, yet did not believe.  

And so she’d been able to stand there, both perfectly aware of what was happening, and completely caught off guard, too, when his lips met hers. There and gone in a second, like a game of kissing tag.  

He pulled back and looked at her, shocked, and she feared he was about to run away. She grabbed his arms and held him back. 

She suggested they go back to the dorm, and he'd grinned with clear relief and said _yes_. 

"Yeah," Bellamy says, now, in response to nothing, and: "okay," and starts to turn back toward his room. 

Clarke calls to him—"What—?"—and he turns back, and she finds there is no more than that one word buzzing and flitting in her brain. Slowly and with difficulty, she manages to ask, "What happened, exactly, last night?" 

Which is an idiotic question, because obviously she knows. But Bellamy smiles like it isn't dumb at all, shrugs up one shoulder, and answers, "I think whatever it was, it started when I did something like this.” Then he crosses the space between them with quick, nervous strides, and kisses her short and sweet on the lips. 

"Oh, right," Clarke whispers, drops her wand to the floor, and wraps her arms around him again. 

* 

"So we're good?" Bellamy asks, as Clarke presses kisses along the line of his jaw. He doesn't sound terribly worried.  

Clarke hums, nodding as she turns from her side onto her back, as well as she can in the narrow space left to her between Bellamy’s body and his dorm room wall. She arches her back to stretch, aware and not displeased that his eyes are wandering down to her chest, and tries to stretch her legs too. Her toes bump up against the edge of the metal bed frame. When she turns lazily to look at him, Bellamy's eye flick immediately back up to her face. 

"I'll have to shower again," she says. "And probably spend the entirety of tomorrow in the library to catch up on my reading. But other than that, yeah. We're good." She smiles and Bellamy smiles back at her, soft and warm. "Very good," she adds, and pulls him toward her for another kiss, her palm resting gently against his cheek. 

* 

That evening, starved from barely eating all day, she heads out with Bellamy, Raven, Monty, and Jasper for an early dinner. A sharp wind blows the newly fallen leaves around their feet and chills their cheeks. They keep their hands safely in the pockets of their jackets and sweatshirts as they walk. The temperature has dropped with the flipping of the calendar: this is autumn with a wintery tinge, not quite the changing of the season but there's a hint of true cold in the air, a darkness to the sky that isn't quite dusk. 

Bellamy holds the cafeteria door open and waves them all through, Clarke first. She catches his eye, and the look he's giving her, a secretive, pleased look that’s just for her, makes her want to hide a bout of giddy laughter behind her hand.  

They find a table with Miller and Murphy, near the window where they can sit and watch the night seep in. Here is a short day coming to an early end. She sits down next to Bellamy without a second thought, and through the conversation— 

"I'm pretty sure I counted six different crimes going on in the bathrooms during that dance." 

"Miller, is that really appropriate dinner conversation?" 

"It is if I don't go into detail about any of the crimes, Reyes." 

—she sways into his space and out again, bumping her shoulder against his, her knee against his. For a while, as they split a giant rainbow sprinkle cookie, fingers knocking against fingers as the pieces crumble at their touch, he lets his hand rest on her leg beneath the table, and she feels like she's glowing.

After dinner, Clarke leads the way back out through the heavy doors and into the cold autumn night. She pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt down over her hands and shivers. From the top of the steps, the campus, dark and lit only by the friendly glow of streetlamps and last night's same nearly-full Halloween moon, looks sleepy but inviting, familiar and safe. A few groups and pairs of students wander down the path toward the student center or along the sidewalks past the left-side quad dorms.  

A gust of wind blows and another strong shiver shakes through her, and she wishes she'd recognized the season for what it is and brought a real coat.  

"You okay?" Bellamy asks her, as the others crowd in behind her and they start on their way down the steps.  

"Yeah." She shoves her hands in the front pocket of her sweatshirt and glances at him out of the corner of her eye. "Why wouldn't I be?" 

"I meant, are you cold?" 

"Oh. Yeah, a little bit." 

Bellamy's not wearing anything heavier than a light jacket himself, but she's still pretty sure he'll offer it to her out of some Bellamy-like spirit of self-sacrifice and stubborn chivalry. Instead, he wraps his arm around her and pulls her close against his side. Which, fair enough, is a smart idea: she does feel instantly, infinitely cozier cuddled up under his arm. She loops her own arm above his waist and they walk like that, close and warm, slow and trailing behind the rest of the group, and sometimes stumbling awkwardly over each other's feet, all the rest of the way home.   

* 

Clarke is halfway through untying her shoes when Raven, previously preoccupied with hanging up her jacket, closes the closet door, turns around, and asks, "So what's up with you and Bellamy?"  

If she was going for a casual, lightly interested tone, she missed the mark. The question comes out slightly too loud, not precisely accusatory, but like words too long rehearsed before spoken. Clarke hesitates over her laces. From this position, looking at Raven without sitting up, her stomach feels squashed and rolls with uncertainty. 

Then she turns back to her sneakers. "Nothing. What's up with you and Gina? I noticed," she pulls her heel free and slides both shoes out of the way, finally sits up, "that you didn't come home last night." 

Raven has her arms crossed and her eyebrow arched. "Nice try. You already know what's happening with Gina because I've been telling you about her for weeks and yes, Detective Griffin, I spent the night with her and it was awesome but that's not what we're talking about." 

"It's what I'm talking about." 

"Except I asked you first." She points an accusing finger Clarke's way. "I saw all that stuff at dinner." 

Clarke shrugs and leans back in her chair, crosses her legs and meets Raven’s gaze with an even stare. "What _stuff_?" 

"The shared looks. The sitting with your chairs close together. The way _he put his arm around you_ while we were walking home. Come on. That's not even flirting anymore. We're all used to the flirting. That's...next level." 

_Yes, of course, next level like his head between my legs._

Under different circumstances, she would, possibly, tell Raven exactly that: if the person in question weren't Bellamy, or if they were talking about a one-night stand, or if she knew precisely the right words to describe the current state of their relationship, and knew Bellamy was on board with her sharing those words with their friends. But. This situation is too delicate. She knows what she feels, and roughly what Bellamy feels, and she knows that if she wanted to, she could cross the hall right now and knock on his door and kiss his stupid handsome face and that would be allowed but the rest? Does she even need to pin it down? Why complicate a good thing with too much analysis? Why break a perfect spell by letting an outsider in? 

Clarke shrugs again and stands up. "I don't know what to tell you, Raven. But Bellamy and I were friends yesterday and we're friends today and you're making too much out of us sitting next to each other. You were sitting next to Murphy. Should Gina be jealous?" 

"You know that's not—" 

But Clarke's already heading for the door. 

"That pasta was too garlic-y, I gotta brush my teeth," she calls over her shoulder, and as she closes their door behind her, she can't help but think that at least nothing she said was a lie. 

* 

Bellamy has his hands splayed across Clarke's back, just beneath her shoulder blades. His touch steadies her. Over his shoulder, through his single, narrow window, she can see the start of a slow November rainstorm building: the hour is ambiguous, the light in his room low, tinted by gathering shadows. She rocks herself on him slowly. He can't do much, sitting in his desk chair and her arms around his neck and her chest pressed against his chest when she leans in, so he lets her set the pace, slow and careful and steady like the raindrops streaking down the glass. 

Then he says, "Miller thinks I have a secret girlfriend," without warning, as Clarke lifts herself up, and she loses her balance and sits down again so hard, she has to swallow her own gasp.  

"What was that about Miller?" 

"He thinks I have a secret girlfriend," Bellamy repeats, somewhat breathless but with admirable patience, as his hands slip down and settle at her hips. "And he thinks it's you." 

Clarke snorts, as if this were a ridiculous notion, as if Bellamy weren't currently inside her, as if she didn't wake up every morning smiling at the thought of his name and the memory of his face. 

"Miller doesn't know anything. Just because, what, we hold hands sometimes?" 

They hold hands every time they go out, reaching for each other with settled instinct as they walk to dinner or the library or to their respective Wednesday afternoon classes, which they both have in Walden Hall on the far side of campus—it just makes sense to walk out there together, their fingers interlaced.  

Bellamy shrugs, and gently urges her to move again. She rolls her hips and he buries a moan against the side of her neck.  

"Well, and—there was that time in your room. When we were sitting on your bed and you had your head in my lap." 

"Friends do stuff like that all the time." 

"Yeah, I know. That's what I told him." 

Clarke lifts her gaze up to the window again, watches the darkening storm clouds, the heavy gathering of rain. The very last of the sun has gone. She reaches out and snaps on the table lamp Bellamy keeps on his desk, bathing them in a ring of their own personal light. 

He tilts his head back and shoots her a questioning look. 

"What?" She kisses the tip of his nose and smiles. "I want to see you."  

“Yeah, okay.” He kisses her lips. “Good idea. I want to see you, too.” 

She wants to see him and she wants this, more of this: her fingers curling in his hair, his arms around her, kissing him again and she never wants to part from him; she wants to feel him this close for as long as she possibly can. 

* 

They see less of each other as Thanksgiving approaches, and with it the looming threat of finals, the mad sprint to the end of the semester closing in. Clarke pins a schedule of deadlines up above her desk, and outlines each one in a harsh, disturbing blood-red. Bellamy's deadlines she does not add to the calendar, but somehow she memorizes them just the same. She knows he has the draft of a Classics paper due on Monday, for example, and that he's probably still in his favorite spot in the back corner of the library, even though it’s nearly ten o’clock at night, because that's where he always goes to bang out a few thousand words without distraction. 

Clarke doesn't want to distract him. 

But she does suspect he could use a jolt of caffeine. Sometimes, when he gets in a zone, he forgets about subtle details like eating and drinking, even about the powerful restorative jolt of the coffee bean.  

So when she finds herself at the late-night study cafe with Monty, picking up an assortment of snacks for the Saturday Night Biology Study-or-Die Party, she orders an extra coffee and a sandwich to go, in addition to her latte and the microwave burrito Monty always judges her for. 

"How late are you planning to stay up, again?" Monty asks, gesturing awkwardly with his own coffee cup at her second drink. 

Clarke finishes grabbing her change, shoves it in her pocket, and then glances at him, caught slightly off guard and surprised, despite herself. "What? Oh, this is for Bellamy." Sliding her bag over her arm and picking up one coffee cup in each hand, she turns toward the door. "The sandwich too." 

"Bellamy?" Monty repeats. His eyebrows are being very judgmental, and Clarke rolls her eyes as she jabs at the elevator button with her elbow. 

"Yeah, our friend Bellamy. He's been in the library all day working on that paper. I thought we could stop by on our way back to Wallace and visit him." 

"Are you sure you don't want to visit him by yourself?" 

"What's that supposed to mean?" 

The elevator dings to announce its arrival and its doors slide smoothly back, giving Clarke a moment's reprieve. Monty shrugs as they step inside. "Nothing. Just that I'm not interested in watching you make out with your boyfriend." 

"Don't make me strain my eye muscles," Clarke answers, pretending that she can't feel the pink tinge on her cheeks. She keeps her gaze steady on the elevator button panel, but still forgets that she has to push the down button before they can move. 

Monty does not bother to hide his laughter when she finally punches it with a bit too much force. 

"He's my friend," she says. "I'm doing something nice for a friend." 

"Yeah, okay," Monty answers. His voice is obnoxiously light. He leans back against the wall, grabbing the railing with his free hand as the elevator car lurches and they begin their descent. "I'm just saying, you've never brought _me_ a coffee while _I'm_ studying in the library. Maybe next time? I’ll have—” 

“Very funny, Monty.” 

* 

Exhausted, bleary, a bit dizzy, Clarke slips beneath her blanket, nestles in against her pillows with her arm beneath her head. There are too many people in her room. The dark outside the windows reflects the bright glow of the lights inside, and she's tired, and her muscles feel weak, her eyelids heavy. So many people and she should be on the floor with them, eating the last of the pizza someone ordered an hour, two hours ago, but the bits and scraps of conversation that drift to her ears make no sense, and when she opens her eyes she sees strange people-shapes, people who might be Raven, or Monty, or Jasper, or who could be strangers, and she doesn't care in the slightest she just wants— 

"Clarke?" 

A deep, familiar voice from somewhere above her. 

She half-turns onto her back and blinks up at him. Bellamy, perched on the side of her bed and looking down at her with gentle, soft concern. Clarke feels his fingers curl around her wrist, like he's trying to anchor her, and for a moment, she feels just a little bit more real. 

"Are you okay?" he asks.  

"Yeah." She reaches up with her free hand and rubs at her eyes with the back of her wrist, lets out a long breath and blinks again. Blinks up at the ceiling, then over to Bellamy's face. "I'm sorry. Just really tired." 

Bellamy's mouth twitches up into a smile, or the start of one. "It's past two in the morning," he says. "Do you want us to leave? We can leave. I can kick everyone out." 

Clarke wants to laugh but she doesn't have the strength, so she flops her arm back down and lets her hand rest where it happens to land, just above his knee. "It's not even your room," she reminds him. "I can—" Her words disappear into a wide yawn, and after, she almost forgets what she was about to say. "I can kick them out. I got it." 

"Oh yeah," Bellamy laughs, low, and gives her wrist a squeeze. He doesn't sound like he's laughing at her but, somehow, at himself. Perhaps at himself for being so endeared by her. Her sleepy brain registers something of the sort as he shifts a little closer, in the way that he can't stop staring at her face. "Yeah, you're in a great position to be throwing people out the door." 

She shrugs and waves her hand around again. "It's okay. I really don't care." 

She doesn't care that she and Bellamy aren't alone, that maybe, beyond him, in the rest of the room that she can't see, and doesn't want to see, the rest of the room that barely exists in her soft, quiet world, here among her pillows and beneath her blanket and curled up in the safety of her sheets—that out there, there are people, those barely familiar shadow-people she could swear that her usual self somehow knows. She takes Bellamy's hand in hers and squeezes hard. 

"I'm okay," she says again. 

He's staring at her with a fondness she understands with easy clarity, a fondness she'll have forgotten by the morning when she wakes. 

"We should let you sleep," he says, and for a moment she's sure that he'll lean down and kiss her goodnight. But he doesn’t. She finds she’s disappointed to watch him go. 

* 

To commemorate the end of Thanksgiving break, Jasper invites everyone to a game of Confession Uno in the parlor, to begin at seven on Sunday night. "It's sort of like strip poker," he explains, as they take their places in a circle on the floor. "Except instead of poker, it's Uno, and instead of taking off your clothes when you lose, you have to lay yourself bare metaphorically instead." He slides the cards out of the box and starts to shuffle them. Several of the faces staring back at him are still resolutely blank, so he adds, "Basically, after every hand, the winner gets to ask the loser, the person with the most cards, any question, and the loser has to answer." 

"Like truth or dare," Monty clarifies, "plus Uno, minus the dare." 

"I don't think that's a better explanation," Raven says. 

Monty makes a face at her and then takes the cards to deal. 

"Can't start yet, though," Miller reminds him. "We're still one man short. Bellamy's not here." 

"How long are we supposed to wait for him? Do we even know if he’s coming at a—" 

"He's just running a few minutes late," Clarke says, and shrugs. She's preoccupied pulling at a thread in the hem of her pant leg and doesn't notice the way the rest of the room has turned to her with interest. When she does glance up and finds herself at the center of their attention, she widens her eyes and stares back at them, a challenge. "What? He texted me earlier. He's finishing a Latin translation." 

"I guess we're just surprised you're such an expert on his comings and goings," Raven says slowly, and Murphy makes a quiet, amused sound under his breath, as if, in fact, he was not surprised at all. 

Clarke would argue further but she's not in the mood for an interrogation, or to put herself on the defensive for no reason at all. She's started to get tired of the little jokes at her or Bellamy's expense, how they can't even sit next to each other without someone giving someone else a knowing look, how every favor he does for her or she does for him is treated like some stunning, revelatory evidence—of what, she isn't even sure. 

No, she reminds herself, as the doors to the parlor rattle open at Bellamy's arrival, and she feels herself grinning just at the sight of him, making room for him next to her in the circle and not even sparing a half-thought that he might sit somewhere else—she knows what their friends think. She knows what their little glances and inside jokes mean. And she knows what she wants to tell him in those quiet moments in his room, listening to his heartbeat, his fingers laced through hers. 

The first round of Uno is intensely competitive, but she can hardly focus. Bellamy is sitting cross-legged next to her, his knee touching her knee. She's sure she'll end up the first loser of the night, but as it happens, she comes in second to last, and it's Bellamy left holding the most cards when Miller declares: "Uno!" and slaps his last card down. 

He fixes Bellamy with an evil grin and rubs his hands together. 

Bellamy just groans and passes his hand over his face. “You’re getting way too much satisfaction out of this,” he says from behind his fingers. “It’s just a game, Miller.” 

"Yeah, a game I just won. So, Blake—what is your relationship with Clarke, _really_?" 

Clarke doesn't want to look at him. She doesn't want to look up at all so she focuses on her cards, sixteen shining black Uno cards scattered in front of her, and pretends that her pulse isn't jumping in her throat. She should have seen this coming, of course. Perhaps Bellamy did, and that’s why he’s hiding his mouth with his hand. Why he’s letting the silence stretch, while everyone watches them, curious and waiting. 

Once or twice, over the last several weeks, she's almost asked him the exact same thing: _what is this, what are we?_ And she's heard the same questions in the low hum of the kisses he presses between her shoulder blades. But why ruin a good thing? Why jeopardize a safe thing? She knows without looking up that while everyone is staring at Bellamy, he is resolutely not staring at her. 

Will he lie? she wonders. 

How could he possibly tell the whole truth? 

Then she feels his hand on her leg and her gaze jerks up, just in time to see the sweet, sad downturn of his mouth when he says, "We're friends." 

That answer doesn't make the adrenaline racing through her veins slow, but she can't imagine any answer would.  

* 

For the rest of the game, she keeps her knee resting against his. She chances several glances at him, and never catches him looking at her in return. 

* 

Eventually, the game splits up. Clarke lingers in the parlor while the others stand and stretch, exchange goodbyes, then trudge blearily back to their dorms or up to their rooms. Bellamy doesn't seem eager to leave, either, but she can't assume it's because he wants to talk to her—or, if he does, that he wants to say to her what she wants to say to him. 

Slowly, he winds his way to the doors and into the lobby, and watching him disappear makes the frozen ice around her limbs break: she knows if he's still waiting that he won't be for long. She rushes after him, the parlor doors clanging too loud in the quiet of the dorm at night, and he turns, unimpressed, and crosses his arms and stares at her. For once, his expression is impossible to read. But at least if he were angry with her, then she would know. 

He opens his mouth to speak but she cuts him off, quick: 

"Bellamy? Confession Uno time?” She pauses, offers a shrug of one shoulder and a lopsided smile. “Minus the Uno?" 

That earns her a small smile at least, though he tips his gaze down to his feet after, so she can't tell how long it lingers. 

"Yeah?" he asks, down at his toes. 

"I—I’m glad you said we were friends, back there. I know it was the only thing you _could_ say and that...we are." 

She watches his shoulders rise up, a shuddering earthquake and she knows he's holding back, letting her say what she needs to say. But he's impatient. He looks up at her again, uncrosses his arms and shoves his hands in his pockets instead.  

"Yeah, I know," he answers, when, for a long moment, she can only look at him: the way his hair catches in his eyes and the way he tips forward a little on his toes, like he hates this space between them just like she does. "Look, I didn't want to talk about all of this with them—" 

"No, I know. I don't either. I just—but I don't want to be friends. Or friends with benefits or—whatever—" 

"You're either breaking up with me," Bellamy says slowly, into the cracked abandoned space where her words fail and fall apart. "Or you're...asking to date me." 

"The second one," Clarke answers quickly. Then she lets out a long, graceless sigh of relief. It’s said and done and she can’t go back. She doesn’t want to. "Definitely the second one. If you want." 

"Yeah. I do—I want that."  

He smiles and she finds she can read him again: they're okay. He feels as silly and vulnerable and nervous as she does, and as elated, and as giddy, and, underneath all the rest, equally at peace. She takes a few more steps toward him, and he pulls his hands from his pockets and reaches for hers. 

"I guess we're going to have to tell those nerds we call friends about this," Bellamy says, with a small self-deprecating roll of his eyes. 

"Yeah, but—" She leans up, and her lips press briefly against his. "I think that can wait until tomorrow, at least." 

**Author's Note:**

> As usual, this college AU is set in my actual alma mater because that's the only college I can picture. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Comments are always appreciated and you can also find me on [tumblr](http://kinetic-elaboration.tumblr.com/).


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